What would happen if you optimized a data store for the operations application developers actually use? You’d arrive at MongoDB, the reliable document-oriented database. With this concise guide, you’ll learn how to build elegant database applications with MongoDB and PHP.

Written by the Chief Solutions Architect at 10gen—the company that develops and supports this open source database—this book takes you through MongoDB basics such as queries, read-write operations, and administration, and then dives into MapReduce, sharding, and other advanced topics. Get out of the relational database rut, and take advantage of a high-performing system optimized for operations and scale.

Learn step-by-step the tools you need to build PHP applications with MongoDB

Steve Francia

Steve is the Chief Solutions Architect at 10gen where leads the public side of the engineering organization. Prior to 10gen Steve led OpenSky to become the first ecommerce site powered by MongoDB and one of the first PHP sites one of the first PHP sites backed by MongoDB. His previous roles include CIO/COO at Portero, VP of Development at Takkle and Founder & CTO of Supernerd. Steve loves open source. He has contributed to dozens of open source projects including MongoDB, Doctrine, Symfony2, Magento and Zoop and has started a few of his own. Steve holds a BA from Brigham Young University, where among other things, he created and taught a course on dynamic web development.

The way I see it, when you're called to write a book review, it's all about the reader's perception about how good it is – and that is very, very subjective. When it comes to programming books, then I guess it has a lot to do with the reader's own expertise, too.I've read some pretty nasty reviews about this book on Amazon and some pretty good reviews on oreilly.com. So, here are my thoughts.

First of all, when I think of programming and/or databases books, I think of heavyweights. That's definitely not the case here. At 62 pages, this is more a white paper than it is a book. It is basically a white paper for experienced PHP developers who have seen a couple of NoSQL technologies or are haunted by the limitations of MySQL and need a few good reasons why they should switch to MongoDB. Thus, there are several MongoDB features introduced but there is hardly the attempt to teach how to use them or to explain them in detail; the text simply acts as a reminder that "this feature exists, go Google it to see how it works in detail".

I have very little experience with PHP and decent experience with MongoDB. What I liked most is that I was able to understand almost everything PHP-wise; that is, apart from all references to the PHP frameworks out there, which should be very meaningful to all readers already using PHP. What I didn't like is that, not only I didn't really learn anything new about MongoDB, but there are a few parts that are already heavily outdated, too – but that is, of course, not the author's fault. A typical example is the all new aggregation framework introduced in MongoDB 2.2 which is missing. Additionally, I found its structure not to be optimal in the sense that bits and pieces of information about a given subject exists in a couple of places instead of having it all gathered in one spot.

All in all, I think this book is targeted to very specific PHP developers with greater than average database know-how, who are trying to bypass the limitations of their current DB model. If you understand what sharding or eventually consistent mean and you are exploring the NoSQL (or even better, the non-RDBMS) space, then this book could help you. If you are a beginner with PHP or MongoDB, then there are a few other books that you could find much more useful than this.

With big data systems becoming the standard for our industry today, it was only a matter of time before these two products were married together.

The book is nicely written with a concise statement on each subject. The examples are just enough to satisfy and leaves the reader to explore further which is my personal preference. A perfect read for someone that is starting out with big data and NoSQL databases in mind.

The book "PHP and MongoDB by Steve France" presents the document-oriented database MongoDB and its relationship with the PHP language, is also a very good introduction to non-relational databases, focusing on the causes that gave rise to MongoDB, as well as the gaps found in the ORM's and the relational databases when you need to work with objects in an efficient and robust way.

The author introduce us to MongoDB in a clear and simple way, describing its objectives, components, features and philosophy.Then he focuses on the relationship between MongoDB and PHP, from that moment, the book changes its structure to become a user guide showing how to install and configure the database and the environment to work with MongoDB through PHP.

He presents each MongoDB feature, from the most basic aspects to the advanced features with PHP code samples, which are explained in detail and finally highlights some PHP libraries and tools that can help us to develop applications using MongoDB.

I want emphasize the fact that the author is a member of the team that developed MongoDB, for me it is highly relevant.My overall evaluation is good, although I had read other documentation on NoSQL databases, I found this book very well explained and I think MongoDB is an excellent gateway to the world of non-relational databases.People who intend to read this book must have knowledge of PHP and object-oriented programming in order to take full advantage from it.

Finally, I must say that after finishing the book I was pleasantly surprised with the features and possibilities of MongoDB, since its implementation in PHP is relatively easy to achieve so I can start testing its functionality almost immediately.

If you are considering MongoDB for your next PHP project this book is a good read to learn MongoDB. Well written , though more examples are welcome and you should play with it also, not just read it. Installation of MongoDB is a missing chapter though its easy atleast in GNU/Linux, never used in Windows so not sure about it :-) , you can read review at http://harikt.com/mongodb-and-php-steve-francia-oreilly